Hiring Painters – How to Find Good Help

One of the biggest questions we get is “How do you find good help? Everyone I hire seems to be unreliable.”

This is a valid point. Many subcontractors are not reliable. They either show up late (or not at all) and their work is shoddy.

If you’re trying to grow your painting business, bad subcontractors can really put a wrench in your operation. You have to show up to the job site to make sure everything’s ok, or go to the paint store to get something they forgot. THEN you have to deal with an angry customer who’s not satisfied with the work.

There ARE reliable subcontractors out there. It’s just a matter of FINDING them and KEEPING them.

Many painting business owners complain about unreliable subs, when the owners are not reliable themselves. To keep reliable subs, YOU have to be reliable also.

A good painting subcontractor is not going to work for you if:

-You don’t pay on-time.
-You don’t have steady work available.
-You don’t do what you say.

It goes both ways. You can complain about not finding reliable help, but if you’re not providing an appealing offer for subs, they’ll work for someone else.

Another complaint we hear about subs is that they’re too expensive. We hear ‘There’s no way you get away with paying your subs 50%’. But in fact, we DO get away with it.

We can pay our subs only 50% of a job and get away with it because:

-We pay on-time.
-We have steady work.
-We do what we say.

A good painting subcontractor can literally get a text containing an address and the colors and have the job completed 2 days later.

Can you imagine how much time you could save if you had subs like this?

We already told you how to KEEP them, but how do you FIND them?

Here’s how we find good subs:

Craigslist Ads – We find almost all of our subs from craigslist. We post ads and then sift through A LOT of applications. We only contact about 10-20% of them. After that we show them a job and what we can pay out. If they feel our price is in the ballpark, we meet at the job and get to know each other and agree on a price.

For new subs we’re considering, we show up at the beginning of each day to make sure the work is going well. If they do a good job, we give them another one, and another one, until we have a good, reliable sub on our hands.

How do we pay them?

We aim for 50% INCLUDING materials. So the subcontractor actually goes and buys paint/materials for us. This leaves us enough gross profit to invest in other things like:

-Marketing our business
-Production management
-Insurance
-Taxes

How do we keep subs from stealing our jobs?

We make sure to put our company lawn signs at the job. Then we monitor it. If any of our subs poach a job, or try to, we don’t work with them again.

After a couple jobs, they see we’re a great source of work. Most subs will not risk stealing a job after seeing this.

We’ve found that 5-7 good painting subcontractors can produce $1,000,000 in a season.

There could still be problems and you might need to get rid of some people. But overall this system will secure a good core of subcontractors for you, opening up all your time to grow your painting business.

Comment below for other suggestions on finding good subs. Thanks for reading!

About The Author

Chandler Zieg ran his own painting company in Denver, Colorado for several years. He also built and sold a moving company that he built utilizing lead services, which is what inspired him to start Painter Choice in 2013.

Hi Robert, we recommend being straightforward with how much you pay, what type of projects you do etc. If you’re looking for subcontractors you’ll want to put something about having their own tools and transportation. We’ve also had success posting the actual job they’d be doing (a picture of the house). This way you can see how they perform on a real job.

I am starting my own painting company, I’m very new, I have only gotten one job so far and I did it myself. I want to get a sub, but I don’t have a steady flow of jobs yet. So, how do I handle this? Do I look for jobs first and then for subs to do the job or viceversa?

Hi Freddy, we would recommend getting more jobs first so you can keep a new subcontractor busy. If you hire a sub before you have any work they won’t see you as a reliable source for new jobs.. Once you sell more bids, schedule them for a couple weeks out so you have time to find/hire a new sub for the work.

Thank you for your response, I appreciate it.
So, what happens if I can’t get a sub before the date I’m supposed to start the job? Are they easy to find? I apologize in advance for all the questions.
Also, do you guys offer coaching or classes?

Hi Freddy, I would allot whatever time you think you need to get a sub, so if you think it will take 2 weeks to interview/find a good sub, then schedule the paint job 2-3 weeks out. In our experience, there are a lot of good subcontractors needing work, so I wouldn’t say they are difficult to find. Worse case scenario, you don’t find one in time, then maybe you can reschedule the client.

We offer a sales coaching program every 6 months or so, but the most recent one just closed. We also have a whole course that offers this kind of advice here.

Freddy | April 2, 2018 at 1:23 pm

Thank you so much Chandler. One last question. What is the sales coaching program called?

Thank you!

Chandler Zieg | April 2, 2018 at 9:53 pm

You’re welcome, Freddy. It’s just called the “Sales Coaching Program” sponsored by Painting Business Pro. You can join the waiting list here.

I don’t understand this…
After that we show them a job and what we can pay out. If they feel our price is in the ballpark, we meet at the job and get to know each other and agree on a price.
You show them the job and them later meet at the same job?

Hi Chris, that’s correct. We talk to them before meeting to make sure our payout is at least in their ballpark. We send them pictures and sq. footage so they can get an idea of what they’ll be paid. Then we physically meet at the job to finalize a price.

Hi Heather, that doesn’t happen to us very often. Subcontracting is basically just a tax shelter, so even though they are subs, we still consider them our crews and we only work with exceptional crews. So we rarely get any complaints about using subcontractors.

Hi Anthony, you’d want to get insurance/workers comp for the company AND make sure your subs have it. It’s the smart thing to do and it’s not expensive considering the coverage you get. Also, customers want to know YOU have insurance, and you don’t want to have to explain that you don’t have insurance but your subs do for example.